Mediterranean's 'horror' tsunami may strike again

THE survivors of a tsunami that killed thousands living on the shores of the Mediterranean in AD 365 called it the "day of horror". Worryingly, history may be due to repeat itself, say geologists who have located the source of the wave.

No one had been able to find evidence pinpointing the earthquake that caused the tsunami, which washed into the Egyptian city of Alexandria and the Nile delta. The mainstream view was that a series of quakes had struck the region - cumulatively thrusting a section of western Crete upwards by 10 metres.

Beth Shaw and colleagues at the University of Cambridge carbon-dated a section of corals on the coast of Crete that were lifted clear of the water during the upheavals. The corals' distribution and identical age showed that one giant quake must have lifted all of them by 10 metres in one massive push - revealing the ...

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